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Today I will give you a little preview for when the Saints have the football on Sunday against the Eagles' defense. As I mentioned in yesterday's defensive preview, the Saints and Eagles stylistically are very similar football teams.
They are both very aggressive and high in volume with their schemes. They both attempt to fool the other team by throwing the kitchen sink at them. But they both love to attack and go for the jugular on a regular basis.
Eagles Defensive Personnel
The Eagles are about as talented as any team in the league defensively, especially in the front four and back four. Their linebackers though are very underrated.
On the defensive line, former Saint Darren Howard is still bringing it, and he does a really good job of occupying blockers to free up other players. On the other side, Pro Bowl Defensive End Trent Cole, who can get pressure on a quarterback all by himself, but is certainly aided by the Eagles heavy blitz scheme. Victor Abiamiri rotates in as well to provide good depth and pressure.
Mike Patterson and Broderick Bunkley start at the two defensive tackle positions. They are both a bit tough to figure out because each possesses an amazing amount of talent, but both are inconsistent. One play you see them shed a block and make a tackle in the backfield; the next they are getting pushed five yards off the ball.
Chris Gocong, Akeem Jordan, and Omar Gaither start as linebackers, while Joe Mays also sees a lot of time. They're a group that excels at filling gaps in the running game to make tackles. And they blitz very effectively. However, they are spotty at best in coverage.
In the secondary, Asante Samuel and Sheldon Brown start on opposite corners, with Quentin Mikell and rookie Macho Harris starting at the safety spots. Sean Jones, Quintin Demps, and Ellis Hobbs will all rotate in nickel and dime packages. This group again is aggressive and has good athleticism and football smarts. To consistently beat them, and the rest of this defense it will take an excellent game plan executed perfectly.
What Philly Does Schematically
I've already mentioned this a few times, but I feel it necessary to repeat. The Eagles like to mix things up. They like to give you a multitude of different looks in order to deceive the quarterback, and offense in general.
The Eagles base defense is a 4-3, but the way they align both their lineman and linebackers varies from play to play. Sometimes the linemen will play the most basic form of a 4-3 where the ends play over each tackle; one DT plays over the guard (3-technique), and the other DT plays inside the other guard and the center (1-technique). If the D-Line is playing this standard alignment, you can pretty much bet the house, the linebackers are moving all over the place.
Other times, they'll put three linemen on one side of the offensive line and even throw a linebacker or two on that side, and completely overload that side. They then roll their coverage to the opposite side, in case the offense is smart enough to try to go away from it (which Carolina was not, haha).
In other forms of their 4-3 they will place the linebackers at different depths to make it look as if one is a safety, or again to try to fool the quarterback into thinking his post-snap assignment will be something different than it actually is.
Finally, the Eagles will play with a 3-down linemen look at times as well. They generally keep their three linebackers in the game and bring in an extra DB. They like to alternate their looks from this, and sometimes bring six, other times dropping all eight.
Additionally, the Eagles use the zone blitz, where they bring a backer or defensive back in place of a d-linemen, who then goes out to play the flat.
In the secondary, the Eagles like to mix things up as well. They play some Cover Two, Three, four, even six (in dime packages) where they basically create a triangle on each side to go three on two against a two by two alignment. When the Eagles choose to blitz these guys, they all do it effectively. Of course, they then roll coverage to the side they are blitzing from, keeping the integrity of their defense.
Because they blitz so much, the flats and short middle of the field are open on a majority of snaps. Beating them deep is difficult because their safeties do a pretty good job of keeping everything in front of them. However, it is possible, especially off playaction.
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